Posted
by
timothy
on Saturday August 09, 2014 @10:34AM
from the billing-codes-had-to-catch-up dept.

Lucas123 (935744) writes "Telehealth medicine, or communicating remotely with patients through electronic means, will be used by nearly one in six North Americans this year, according to Deloitte. With an aging Baby Boomer population and a growing shortage of primary care physicians, electronic visits (eVisits) reduce both time and cost in treating common ailments. The overall cost of in-person primary physician visits worldwide is $175 billion. Globally, the number of eVisits will climb to 100 million this year, potentially saving over $5 billion when compared to the cost of in-person doctor visits. Last November, The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) revamped its patient portal, renaming it MyUPMC, and rolling out AnywhereCare, offering patients throughout Pennsylvania eVisits with doctors 24 hours a day, seven days a week either over the phone or through video conferencing. The service offers a 30-minute or less wait time and saves the hospital system more than $86 per patient over a traditional visit."

Why in the heck would you think that is true? Where I work every single bit of handwritten information about you is already sent to the Philippines for transcription. Nearly everything else is too because electronic records are sent for medical coding. A Bangladeshi company handles collections so they have access to nearly all of your information so they can do their job. Also, we sell discharge data to several foreign companies, because Bill Archer, a stupid DINO like the rest of the so-called Democrats in this country, decided that information should not be protected.

Even worse is that HIPAA is limited to only a select few people. If you're not a "covered entity," then you are under no requirement to protect patient privacy.